Miranda Dyson, Children’s Education Associate
In celebration of creative teens, the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards is dedicated to acknowledging young writers. Categories within the awards range from Flash Fiction to Novel, Dramatic Script to Critical Essay, Poetry, Journalism, and beyond. Every spring, dozens of writing teachers, authors, and book club enthusiasts spend time reading and judging works submitted by students in FWMoA’s Scholastic region. The same is true each year—our judges are floored by captivating works.
Excerpts are taken from each piece that receives a Gold or Silver key award and are displayed throughout the Scholastic exhibit at FWMoA on gold and silver paper. In the center of the main gallery, a slanted pedestal holds in book format the complete works of any Gold or Silver key written works. These are divided by category and available, at cost, at Lulu.com. The works that receive an Honorable Mention are shown in their entirety on an ipad within the exhibit.
The top five written works are selected as the region’s American Voices Nominees. These are put through to national judging and one is selected as the American Voices Medalist for the region. Fort Wayne’s local radio station, 89.1 WBOI, has partnered with FWMoA for several years, having AV Nominees to read their works on the air. These recordings are then accessible within the FWMoA gallery so visitors can listen to the works in the voice of the writer.
Below are excerpts of writings by the American Voices Nominees, Caliel Mosley, Sreeja Bhattacharjee, Jai Gaba, Lailah Byrd, and American Voices Medalist, Tulsi Patel.
(Excerpt from) Preliminary Report on Anomalous Observational Phenomena Associated with Artifact B-12 (“The Effigy”)
by Tulsi Patel
I sat at the table and activated the wall-mounted monitor that displayed the live feed from Camera One. The Effigy appeared on-screen: still, silent, perfectly symmetrical. For control purposes, I held one eye closed for several seconds while watching the live feed, then the other. [section illegible — overwritten repeatedly] …No measurable deviation. I tested peripheral viewing, reflection viewing, and momentary gaze aversion. All results remained consistent: the Effigy did not move unless fully unobserved.
“Initial presentation,” I narrated. “Recording previous scholarly observations.” I pressed play on the curated audio compilation: forty-five minutes of academic commentary, recorded interviews, and the occasionally rambling testimony from previous observers.
The first voice, a former professor whose tenure was more rumor than achievement, spoke with the crisp articulation of someone who feared irrelevance. “At times, I thought the figure leaned forward. As though listening.”
A second voice, younger, eager: “I saw its hands move. Only slightly, but enough.” I listened only with half attention. My hand absently stroked the cool metal of my pocket watch, feeling the engraving on its surface, an ouroboros biting its tail. When the last testimony ended, an incoherent recording from a sculptor who swore the Effigy had opened its eyes, I clicked off the audio.
“Unsubstantiated,” I said into the recorder. “Psychological projection. Pareidolia. Absence of controlled conditions.”
(Excerpt from) Talk White to Them
by Caliel Mosley
I dressed like I had something to hide
Baggy pants, Nike Forces, and a Dennis Rodman t-shirt
Silver rings encasing my knuckles, and a gold cross decorating my neck
But that gold cross dangling around me was a gift,
My grandmother blessed me with that cross on my 13th birthday
She wanted to remind me the Lord takes care of his kin,
Everyone who aspires to live like him
Will live with his love inside of them,
And never be forsaken as a child of God
But these people saw no such God in me
Not as long as I talk like black God
Walk like black God
Dress like black God
So, I learned a second language,
I adopted into my heart the white God,
The right God
(Excerpt from) Over Easy
by Sreeja Bhattacharjee
I remember you, even when no one else does, watchmaker.
You lived in the little hut in the center of the woods, and when I waddled down from the hill to forage for mushrooms, you always peeked out and asked me if I’d had breakfast.
I never had breakfast, back then. No food, but so much time to feel hungry. And you had so much food, but such little time.
You used to retreat into your house and leave the rust-red door propped open. A choice. You were generous with choices. As if they were important things, heartbeats you had once been denied.
I used to teeter at the crest of that hill, pebbles lodged into the ragged soles of my boots, leaves in my hair, sweat cooling sticky on my upper lip in the swelling dawn. I enjoyed the feeling of making decisions. Power was a rare burden on my back.
But I would always, inevitably, trod down the hell and walk through the door.
It was a strange place, your house, but I was ten and unafraid of the world (or at least determined not to show it).
I sat on your workbench while you beat eggs with a bent fork. Buckets of muggy light used to spill in through the muck-stained window, baptizing the room in a mossy green glow. The table was strewn with little silver wheels and screws the size of my thumbnail, and usually a watch with a shattered face or a torn strap. And I wondered why you bothered. Something that seemed so unfixable, you still labored on with.
(Excerpt from) An Analysis of Dickensian Dialect and Narrative Structure by Jai Gaba
Dickens’ unique perspective of the world made for unique novels. One of the best known of these stories is Great Expectations, a realistic fiction coming of age novel published in newspaper serials from 1860 to 1861. While Great Expectations is known for the depth of its exploration of similar themes such as corruption and class, a more interesting aspect of this book is Dickens’ writing style. Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, showcases a unique set of literary devices, grammatical constructions, and writing choices.
Firstly, Dickens pioneered not only the serial writing style, but was a co-spearheader of novelism as a whole. According to Radhika Jones, an aficionado in the culture of literature who has a background in academia, “In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain. People had been writing novels… but nobody aspired to do it professionally. Many works of fiction appeared anonymously” (Jones). He gave aspiring novelists courage that authoring could be something to be proud of. Before him, the populace nearly always considered that writing, especially that of fictional stories, had no practical use in the slightest, and thus was considered to be a useless act, such that those few authors who dared to publish stories would almost always release them anonymously. This ashamed nature of publishing was all but inverted, made utterly unrecognizable by the now beloved Dickens, whose writings depicted scenes from his own Victorian Era society, and in this, necessarily showed the societal challenges that plagued the Victorian Era. His great innovation, which he struck upon through whatever it may be called, be it providence, kismet, fate, or luck, to not conceal these issues out of some vain sense of nationalistic pride or hubris, but rather, to bring all the attention he could muster to the contemporary issues like of wealth inequality, classism in the judiciary, and ubiquitous injustices. This revolutionary popularization of writing is part of what makes Dickens who he is.
(Excerpt from) The Moth
by Lailah Byrd
It slipped between our sheets
at dusk
and gnawed a hole in the center of my chest where you once slept
beneath my chin.
It chewed at the faint memory of your voice,
nestled itself around the rough edges of your touch,
and buried its teeth into your palms so that I could no longer hold them.
It did not speak,
yet knew how to unthread closeness and replace it with a pain that I had not yet become familiar with.
It fed on the quiet,
drank your absence,
and curled in the space left behind just wide enough for forgetting.
By morning, it would be dead—
body silvered and heavy with regret,
resting on the windowsill in the early-morning light.
Dust would swirl around its fat carcass
and I would sweep it away,
careless and half-hearted.
But for now,
the mattress dips and splits in the center, and I swear I could hear it breathe,
pressed between my heart and ribcage and the two people who once dreamed the same.
If you would like to participate in this program as a judge, please contact the Children’s Education Associate at miranda.dyson@fwmoa.org for more details.
To read original pieces by our teens, purchase your own copy of writings at Lulu.com!